S U N D A Y

I’m in France for work I want to be doing. How removed from danger I feel is a joke. It’s unjust. It stares me in the face. I am safe. In the countryside. Stars at night. That.

This isn’t about me. The first text I received from my boyfriend (that word sounds so f*cking trite everytime I say it). Danny. The first text I read the morning I woke up, in this bliss, was from Danny and it said, “8 people were shot and killed on Calhoun street in Charleston.” his subsequent texts described what would be broadcasted on the news since. Charleston. That home. Those faces. Far away.

We write because we’re selfish. I don’t need the internet to know that I cry If I think about their names. I don’t need the internet to know that I keep counting objects. Three ducks. Six coins. Nine flowers. Nine.

But here I am. It is Sunday. No work. The market. Boulangerie. Finishing Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Eating brie. A day that goes and goes without interruption. It is so unfair. To be murdered while gathering for prayer. That is sickening. I can not put myself in that room.

I miss Charleston more than ever, but to miss is such an annoying emotion. I’m proud of Charleston’s resilience and sympathy. I need for Charleston. I’m hurt for Charleston. I have it easy.

“I typically don’t post anything political on this, but….” is the go-to excuse for bloggers who feel exempt from speaking their minds, until they don’t. I’m guilty. What that reduces to: I post close to nothing important on here.

And what is the purpose of celebrating mornings if I don’t acknowledge the mornings that are only grief and nothing else? What is the purpose of product round-ups or photographs of my white self with my white boyfriend during our white vacation? In a world were terror is, that is not reality.

So what? I have nightmares. I am sad. It is nothing. Families are actually suffering. To be motherless. To be violated. To be scared. To learn how to heal. That is someone’s reality now because a man younger than me has access to weapons and believes he is right. Try to understand that they were praying.